This is a continuation post from the niche site duel I started earlier. Take a look at post one, two and three first if you haven’t already.

As you may have read, I started with a slightly different method of creating a niche site from the standard model that Pat and Tyrone followed in the Niche Site Duel.

Instead I was to make a series of videos to drive traffic to a squeeze page, build a list and sell products. This didnt work out so well… Maybe because I didn’t put enough work into it (probably this), maybe because the model was wrong, maybe because the niche was wrong, for whatever reason, here are some quick results:

I made 24 videos – first problem as the target was at least 50 – and you can see them here: http://www.youtube.com/user/stopsleepapnea

Stats

The videos so far have received 878 views.

From those 878 views I received about 85 visitors. ~10% CTR (Click Through Rate)

From those 85 visitors, I received 12 email sign ups to my squeeze page. ~ 14% Opt In Rate

From the 12 visitors, I have sold 1 product for a comission of $10.

Granted I only spent about 2 days in total making the squeeze page and the videos, but this is still not a great result by any standard.

Tips from Videos

I wanted to give a few tips I learned from making the videos. I have been working on projects I find much more interesting than this one, many using videos such as the free course I built on how to make an online store. So I have learned lots. And this was my first forte into video so I am glad I did it.

Video Tools:

To make these videos, I used three different tools:

• Microsoft Powerpoint – Create a slide show (Use Open Office if you don’t have)
• Cam Studio – Screen and audio recording
• Windows Live Movie Maker – Editing

These are all free and easy accessible tools that anyone can use to start making videos.

For the content, I used PLR (Private Label Rights) content that you can find around the web by searching. This is basically content you can buy for really cheap and brand as your own (I spent less than $10).

Video Techniques

Few tips I want to share when making the videos.

1. Make your videos short and varying in length
2. Create a strong call to action at the end with clear instructions – “click on the link below and sign up to our newsletter to get xyz”
3. Create long outros to your videos after your call to action. This means the user has less of a chance of being distracted by the related videos that pop-up and will more likely click on your link.
4. Use Tube Mogul to distribute your videos to multiple video directories

Why did I Fail?

The main reason this project failed was not enough traffic to the videos. There are thirdly main reasons for this.

Firstly, I didnt make enough videos… If I had made 100 videos, I would have had at least 4 x the visits. Probably more because the chances of one or two of them becoming popular and getting many hits is much greater.

Secondly, I didn’t market my videos. This is huge. I didn’t build backlinks or get comments to videos thus they sailed by unnoticed.

Thirdly, I didnt pick a ‘video friendly’ niche. Sure my competition research was sound, but logically I think I was off. Sleep Apnea is not a visual topic and not many people are searching for it on YouTube. If I had picked something like Golf Swing or something more visual then I think I would have been in a better situation.

What Next?

Well, if you have visited http://sleepapneastop.com in the last few days then you may have noticed it is no longer a squeeze page (a page designed to get just name and emails like http://www.eshopwiz.com) but is now a blog.

I have decided to turn it into an auto blog cluster.

I may talk about this in the future, but for now all you need to know is there are hundreds of blogs running on it that all look like this:

http://sleepapneastop.com

http://antisnore.sleepapneastop.com/

http://cpap.sleepapneastop.com/

As usual, there is nothing better than a good failure to keep you on your toes. Besides the video marketing, I learned lots about squeeze pages, list building and a whole lot more. Plus the project is not yet dead, taking a new direction.

Oh, I also learned I don’t like learning about, reading about, talking about or making videos about sleep apnea. Thus why the auto blog route. I couldn’t stand to make more content on this subject 🙂